Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality are rapidly being integrated into mainstream consumer use and adoption. For the most part the adoption has been limited to standalone applications that consumer's access to experience a three-dimensional experience of a real world place or an animated place. Adoption has been made within the gaming community as well for purposes of playing video games.
Current estimates project over 200 million VR headsets will be sold by the year 2020 in the United States only, which represents ⅔rds of the current United States population.
Presently, there is very little technology providing collaboration within existing VR applications with the gaming industry being the exception.
Retailers have made a lot of progress in terms of reaching consumers through the various technology modes that consumers have adopted. However, very little progress has been made by retailers with respect to VR. Moreover, the progress that retailers have made is often communication channel specific, such that when a consumer contacts a retailer via specific electronic communication mechanism, there has been very little progress in permitting that same consumer during the specific electronic communication mechanism to switch to a different electronic communication mechanism. This means that some consumers that switch been various types of electronic communication mechanisms may be lost or may not be reached in a manner that reflects the preferences and behavior of the consumers.